This was a flawless read until the very end where he takes an easy way out. Very melodramatic (in a good way) and serious.
"Some spoke of the nobility of the law. Stern did not believe in that. Too much of the grubby boneshop, the odor of the abattoir, emanated from every courtroom he had entered. It was often a nasty business. But the law, at least, sought to govern misfortune, the slights and injuries of our social existence that were otherwise wholly random. The law's object was to let the seas engulf only those who had been selected for drowning on an orderly basis. In human affairs, reason would never fully triumph; but there was no better cause to champion."

I expected more thrill than I got from this second entry in Turow’s Kindle County Legal Thriller series. The first book, Presumed Innocent, was full of suspense. This one, not so much. The material was there - a questionable suicide, the disappearance of a near million dollar estate, unethical securities trading, some seriously dysfunctional family dynamics – but the overdone philosophical musings really bogged things down. It did keep me interested enough to finish but not enough that I want to pick up the next book.

Oh, and about that ending -  - you’ve been warned.

This book took me forever to read and after all was said and done, nothing really happened. It's supposed to be a legal thriller but there's very little to do with the law in it and it's definitely not very thrilling. It's the story of Sandy Stern, after learning his wife has committed suicide, tries to deal with his new life and a legal issue his brother in law is having. The majority of the book is spent with Sandy throwing himself at lots of different women, now that he's "free" I guess, and working on his relationships with his kids. We spend several pages simply watching him pick strawberries. The best two words that sum up this book: nothing happens.

A very good novel, and probably my favourite of all of Scott Turow's books. A tale of marriage, family and suicide not to mention a fairly decent thriller. Sandy Stern (first seen in presumed innocent) comes home to find his wife has committed suicide -- and we follow his life in the months that follow as he tries to keep his life together and understand why his wife would do something like that.

For a longer review, please go here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_29816...

Lo scrittore che ha sensibilità linguistica trova le proprie metafore, non semplicemente perché gli hanno insegnato ad evitare i cliché, ma perché si diverte a trovare un’immagine vivida e precisa alla quale nessuno, che lui sappia, ha mai pensato prima.
(John Gardner)

Può piacervi o meno la storia che state leggendo, il genere del romanzo che avete in mano, il protagonista dello stesso, ma a fare la differenza tra un buono scritto e uno mediocre non è ciò che si racconta quanto come lo si fa. È altamente improbabile che se amate i romanzi storici o i drammi sentimentali vi troviate proprio questo libro per le mani ed è un problema vostro, perché Turow, esattamente come dice Gardner poco sopra, trova sempre le proprie metafore. Ogni ottimo scrittore dovrebbe possedere almeno una frazione della sensibilità e capacità descrittiva di questo autore se vuole davvero attraversare il breve spazio che separa un lettore dal suo libro e toccarne le corde emotive. Turow riesce a trasmettere eccitazione, sensualità, trasporto e ogni altro stato d'animo, a volte senza nemmeno nominarlo.
La sessualità, quella mano che sfiora la gemma viva del corpo femminile, i tremiti, le sensazioni; non c'è mai volgarità in qualcosa che tanti altri sanno rendere solo con la stessa. Due passi ho sottolineato e credo conservino una certa carica espressiva malgrado siano estrapolati dal contesto:

«Si sentiva come una bolla di sapone, una superficie sottile che racchiudeva l’eccitante assenza di peso della libertà.»

«Era la vera eredità che gli aveva lasciato Clara, gli istanti d’orrore mentre riconosceva le forme nascoste nel caos che si era lasciata dietro.»

Per il resto, la premessa che ho fatto sul fatto di trovarsi il libro sbagliato tra le mani vale per me per primo, mi aspettavo un legal thriller, mi aspettavo una storia avvincente come Presunto innocente e invece qui dell'aspetto legale c'è ben poco e le fasi processuali sono ridotte all'osso, sebbene sottendano sempre la narrazione. Non manca qualche colpo di scena ben piazzato e una storia discretamente avvincente ma non nascondo la delusione nell'aver pregustato per tanto tempo un agone giudiziario che non è mai arrivato.
Peccato, è l'unica cosa che manca a questo libro per la perfezione.

Many novels in the thriller genre, legal or otherwise, are very plot driven, which shouldn't be all that surprising. Part of the "thrill" is jumping from event A to event B to event R that ties back to A. "Burden of Proof", on the other hand, is very much a character-driven story, dealing with defense attorney Sandy Stern as he tries to unravel the consequences of his wife's suicide. There is a legal conspiracy at play, and it ties nicely into the plot, but this is about a man dealing with the primary regrets of middle-age: "Did I emphasize my career over my family?", and "If I could do it again, how would I change it?"

A nice change, although I would have preferred a bit more courtroom drama.

For a lot of pages, lawyer Sandy Stern stumbles hither to yon dealing with his brother-in-law's financial hi jinx and his own personal and family issues.

Ottima caratterizzazione dei personaggi e interessanti riferimenti alle questioni finanziarie, societarie, bancarie, quali argomento dell'indagine, almeno per me che di queste cose so ben poco.
Nella storia si approfondisce molto bene il rapporto tra i personaggi che la animano, dove nessuno risulta mai essere come sembra. Molto azzeccato il finale.
A tratti forse un po' lento, ma rimane un'ottima lettura.

Like Presumed Innocent (1987), The Burden of Proof is a mystery with the death of an enigmatic woman at the center. Both books force the protagonists on a journey of outward and inward exploration to probe their lives and their relationships with these dead women. In both the case of Rusty Sabich and Sandy Stern, each is so intent on creating a semblance of "normal" life that he refuses to acknowledge the darker influences in his life until compelled to confront them in a dramatic fashion. With Clara's suicide, Sandy must examine his own failings in his relationships with his wife and with his children. At the same time, he comes to realize that the interpretations he has made of other people or events are flawed.The central characters of The Burden of Proof are nearly all members of the Stern family.

At the center of the novel is Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, Rusty Sabich's enigmatic defense lawyer from Presumed Innocent. As this novel indicates, Sabich's trial had increased Stern's practice and he seems the model of the successful professional man. However, when he comes home to discover his wife dead in the garage with only the note, "Can you forgive me?", the fifty-six-year old Stern is forced to face the deficiencies and failures in his life.

He comes to realize that he had chosen to avoid looking at the darker aspects of his wife, including the fact that she had always been an unhappy woman, full of secrets. As flashbacks in the book reveal, he had found Clara's past a mystery; he had never really understood how he, a poor immigrant, had been able to marry Clara Mittler, the daughter of a prominent and wealthy attorney. Clara's death forces him to reexamine and analyze their relationship in a way that he never had while she was alive.

Stern also has to confront the mysteries embedded in his three children — Peter, a doctor, whose troubled relationship with his father continues to deteriorate after his mother's death; Marta, a legal aid lawyer in New York who comes to her father's aid when he himself becomes involved in legal proceedings; and Kate, his youngest daughter, whose beauty seems to have shielded her from many of life's harsh realities.

Each of these children hides a number of secrets whose revelation forces Stern to re-evaluate his original assumptions about them.

Also important in the story is Dixon Hartnell, husband of Stern's beloved sister, Silvia. Dixon, head of a commodities futures trading empire and owner of Maison Dixon, a brokerage house, is Stern's chief client and often the bane of his existence.

Stern half admires this powerful, womanizing, and self-confident businessman as the prototypical American and half despises him for the pain that this self-involved man sometimes inflicts on those around him.

Dixon's shady dealings bring Stern into contact with Assistant U.S.

Attorney Sonia Klonsky. Klonsky, after spending a decade in various graduate programs, had now embarked on a demanding law career while in her early forties. Stern finds this woman, in the midst of her first pregnancy after a bout with breast cancer and in a shaky marriage, a compelling figure; she seems to offer him the enticing prospect of starting over again.

However, he gradually overcomes his infatuation with her and eventually marries Helen Dudak, an old family friend now divorced from her husband.

Like Stern, Helen has had to learn to adapt to the single life after the security of a long-term relationship.

They both have learned by their failures and are ready for the demands of a new marriage.

The story line is a five star hands down. I loved the deceit and strategies behind selling short and the cover up of the family members and the mystery behind The Who done it. Excellently written and applaud the masterful writing here.
Now the bad part. REALLY? why do you have a middle age, overweight man, who just lost his wife, banging all these women all of a sudden. And why did the author need to write in three different love triangles. Ya I know a triangle has three sides but this was like nine sided. Totally disrupted the excellent story. Was this a romance novel? And oh cumon, what lawyer would load a body into his trunk and move it? Geez.

I honestly don’t know how I hung with this book all the way until the end. Sandy Stern is normally a great character but in this he just comes off as flat at best and kind of deplorable at his worst.

This book has two intertwined plots, nether of which feel particularly developed. He has a rich client who did…something…I guess and the result is various legal troubles that Sandy is defending him against. I felt like this aspect of the book was poorly introduced, to the point where I honestly thought I had accidentally skipped a few chapters at first. As the book goes on. It’s so much on the back burner that when we finally get around to it, the feeling I had was that Turrow forgot to write all the courtroom scenes and crammed a few in at the end.

The second deals with the death of Sandy’s wife, the one part of the book that I felt had promise. But the way Sandy behaves in the wake of the loss of his wife just felt off from every other depiction of him I have seen. I’ve always seen him as almost obsessively respectful and carrying a lot of dignity but within months of his wife passing he is already fantasizing about seemingly every woman he encounters and has had three or four sexual encounters, all with different women. It’s a lot harder to feel sympathy for a character when this is how he is dealing with the pain of his loss and the flashback scenes showing the beginnings os his relationship with his wife just felt shoehorned and irrelevant to me.

Maybe I’m missing something here and there are some small elements that bring all this together. But I wasn’t particularly impressed with this. Up until now, I have only read a few of Turrow’s books and after this, I don’t know how much farther I will end up traveling into the Kindle County universe. I’ll give the next book a try but it’s with quite a bit less enthusiasm than I did with this.

So I love these books. I have read them out of order however no matter as the players change and yet stay the same. This was a particularly family drawn and emotional book! I love Sandy! The main character and immigrant trying to live the American dream! Hard work and family aside is how that’s done but watch your family in the end blood? Is thicker than money and success.